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Stories have come to light over the past few years that it wasn't just diseases that popped up and killed the Native Americans. There was a strategy in place in which some Whites in power practiced to eliminate the Natives. The Natives were given infected blankets and that along with NO medical care while being dislocated from their homes (being exposed to the elements, fatigue, etc) and relocated by having to WALK hundreds, if not thousands of miles, to some far outpost of barren land that no White person had decided they wanted for themselves yet.
This happened in the 1800s and was done by agents of the US Government. But whites had been displacing Indians for. Centuries by then.
Stories have come to light over the past few years that it wasn't just diseases that popped up and killed the Native Americans. There was a strategy in place in which some Whites in power practiced to eliminate the Natives. The Natives were given infected blankets and that along with NO medical care while being dislocated from their homes (being exposed to the elements, fatigue, etc) and relocated by having to WALK hundreds, if not thousands of miles, to some far outpost of barren land that no White person had decided they wanted for themselves yet.
I'm not arguing, I'm just asking -- which forced marches were "thousands of miles"?
We have only the archaelogical record to understand the Americas pre-contact. That is a limited record on which to make the sweeping judgments implied by the OP.
After this statement you seem to switch to agreeing with the OP, to the effect that there was nothing perfect about pre-contact life in the Americas. A look at the cenotes in Mayan Mexico tells you all you need to know.
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Originally Posted by TheCityTheBridge
It is also silly to imagine that post-contact & pre-reservation native civilizations were the same as pre-contact civilizations in the Americas.
Given their decimation by diseases I am guessing you're right. Smallpox was an equal opportunity killer and killed the wiser and smarter as well as less gifted.
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Originally Posted by TheCityTheBridge
Manifest Destiny and intentional ethnic cleansing came later. What 1491 makes clear is that disease--brought accidentally to the Americas by the Europeans with the livestock that was their food store--destroyed civilizations from the arctic to Patagonia. We have limited evidence as to what life was like here before contact because of that devastation.
I agree that our evidence is pauce by we do have both viewing and remains from Aztecs, Mayas, Incas and Cahokia. On all but Cahokia we have pretty good oral histories. These were not peaceful or noble societies.
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Originally Posted by TheCityTheBridge
The peoples of the Americas were not noble savages. They used fire to shape their landscape, attract desirable game, and ward off undesirable species. Like everywhere else humans have touched, the environment was a built one.
Humans everywhere were and are a keystone species. That's a fact, neither good nor bad. They helped shape the environment. Even then they may have had a hand in the extinction of woolly mammoths, and the populations explosions and later crashes of bison and passenger pigeon populations.
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Originally Posted by TheCityTheBridge
Americans were defeated by disease almost 500 years ago. European expeditionary forces mopped up the remains in the ensuing centuries. Atrocities were indeed committed in the colonization era. But disease was the Prime Mover.
I think disease did most of the damage.The remaining natives were desperate and largely leaderless. The natives may have been better at coexisting if their leadership weren't shredded by disease.
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Originally Posted by TheCityTheBridge
It is quite well documented that the European Age of Exploration was motivated by the desires to establish trade routes, to acquire land, and to "civilize" the world's "barbarians." There was ample racism within that 3rd motivation.
Your milquetoast description of history serves only to sanitize the conduct of the people of a particular continent.
I don't know if that was "racism" or a recognition that the two could not coexist with status quo cultures. The Europeans' view was it was their culture that was going to prevail.
I have American Indian ancestry but there comes a time when you have to admit facts. American Indians were savages that were not the sweet people so many want to make them out to be. There were peaceful tribes and warrior tribes.
I recently saw a documentary about the "Lost Colony" and the idea that the colony was overrun by Indians and some of the people lived as slaves to the Indians and were taken to Copper mines to beat out the copper. People from Jamestown were thought to know where these people were but did not have the necessary numbers to go and rescue them.
Last edited by NCN; 05-14-2017 at 09:39 PM..
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